Why so Series? Part 1

     I've just recently listened to the first two books of British tv presenter and comedian Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club trilogy, and I was quite satisfied. The stories were good, the characters even better, and the narrator of the audiobooks is one of the best ever.  While there's not really a whole lot of history in the novels - except that the main characters are all in their 70s and living in a senior development - there are lots of detective stories rooted in history, and many of these have become series. A reader can follow along with the twists and turns of a good mystery and immerse themselves in another time, simultaneously. Some of these books I've mentioned before, here's a list just to get you started.

    Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series is a favorite series (15 books).  Gunther, the main character, starts out as a detective in 1930s Berlin in the first book of the series, vainly trying to keep order and sanity under Nazi rule. Over the course of the series, he finds himself involved in cases that take him all the way through the Cold War.

    Tony Hillerman's series (25 books)about Navajo Nation detective Joe Leaphorn is classic. The books combine good mystery stories with lots of depth in Navajo culture and beliefs. Since Tony's death, his daughter Anne has continued the series. Now Joe Leaphorn mostly acts as a consultant while his former partner Jim Chee solves crimes with his wife Bernie Manuelito.

    So far, there are 22 Phryne Fisher novels, and two tv series based on them. Phryne is an Australian flapper, a very modern woman for the late 1920s and early 1930s, who finds herself mixed up in all sorts of illegal shenanigans.

    Craig Johnson's Longmire (21 books) has also been made into a tv series. Sheriff Walt Longmire is a contemporary Wyoming Sheriff, but his work often involves historical objects and artifacts and dealings with the local Cheyenne reservation.

    Brad Meltzer has some catching up to do. His Beecher White series only has 3 titles at the moment, but I'll let it slide, since Meltzer has written dozens of other titles. Beecher White is an archivist, yes and archivist - employed at the National Archives in Washington DC- and he is recruited to join the Culper Ring, an organization named after the spy ring formed by George Washington during   the Revolution. As Meltzer tells it, the Culper Ring has spent the last two hundred years protecting Presidents and preventing national catastrophes. 

    And if you want to go back a few centuries, there's always the Cadfael series (and another tv series) of 24 books. Cadfael is a 12th century former Crusader who becomes a monk, and of course he finds lot of mysteries to solve in monasteries, convents, and medieval villages.